Obama camp slams Clintons over drugs talk

Barack Obama’s campaign has dismissed as not believable a prominent Hillary Rodham Clinton backer’s “tortured explanation” for seeming to inject Obama’s youthful drug use into the 2008 presidential campaign, and called it “troubling” that Clinton has not done more to distance herself from the remark.

Former President Bill Clinton was drawn into the controversy on Monday in appearances on black radio talk shows. He told one host, Roland Martin, that impolitic remarks by supporters sometimes “just happen” in politics and said, “I think it's important not to overreact to them.”

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Obama has admitted in his memoir to using drugs as a young man, and Hillary Clinton has said personal attacks using that information are off-limits. Except they keep coming, in what are now at least three direct or indirect drug references from top Clinton surrogates in recent weeks.

It happened again Sunday, at a Clinton campaign event before the senator went onstage.

Robert L. Johnson — a prominent businessman who founded Black Entertainment Television and is a top fundraiser, or Hillraiser, for the Clinton campaign — was giving a lengthy introduction of Clinton at a campaign town hall in Columbia, S.C., when he launched into a defense of the senator and President Bill Clinton for remarks that have drawn criticism in the black community.

Johnson said the Clintons have been “deeply and emotionally involved in black issues — when Barack Obama was doin’ something in the neighborhood that I won't say what he was doin,’ but he said it in his book.”

The Clinton campaign later put out statement in which Johnson claimed he was referring not to drug use but to community organizing.

The Obama campaign Monday said that story does not wash. “His tortured explanation doesn’t hold up against his original statement,” campaign press secretary Bill Burton said in a statement. “And it’s troubling that neither the campaign nor Sen. Clinton — who was there as the remark was made — is willing to condemn it as they did when another prominent supporter recently said a similar thing.”

That was a reference to the prominent instance of a drug reference by a high-profile Clinton backer in December. National Clinton campaign co-Chairman Bill Shaheen resigned from the campaign after he speculated to The Washington Post on Dec. 12 about Obama’s general election vulnerabilities: “The Republicans are not going to give up without a fight ... and one of the things they're certainly going to jump on is his drug use.”

Then, Clinton pollster Mark Penn added kerosene to the controversy by emphasizing “cocaine use” when asked on MSNBC’s “Hardball” about the Shaheen incident: “Well, I think we've made clear that the issue related to cocaine use is not something that the campaign was in any way raising.”

Clinton officials were pressed on Monday for explanations why the drug issue keeps being blurted from the mouths of top Clinton aides if the topic is supposedly verboten.

“We have no tolerance for it,” responded Howard Wolfson, the campaign communications director. “We have made it clear it’s not a topic we’re discussing in this campaign. It’s unequivocally not a part of our campaign.”

Bill Clinton, too, was grilled on the matter in at least two black radio appearances. Martin, interviewing the former president on WVON-AM in Chicago, made it clear that he — like Obama’s campaign — considered Johnson’s explanation for his Sunday comments laughable.

“Anybody listening can know what he was talking about — he wasn't talking about community organizing," the host said, according to an account posted by the New York Sun.